| name | autobahn |
| description | Ship a northstar handoff's goals in an ai-catapult-init repo — ultragoal one-PR-per-goal, deterministic engine-pick, peer review, CI gate, fail-closed merge, cascade closure. |
| eval | autobahn |
Autobahn
Autobahn drives a northstar A→B handoff to shipped code: one PR per sliced goal,
each peer-reviewed, CI-green, and merged only under explicit authority. It is a
lightweight composer — it delegates to existing engines and skills and never
reimplements their loops, merge policy, or cascade logic.
Quick Start
- Run the prereq gate (fail-closed) against the repo root:
bash autobahn/prereq-check.sh --root .
- Consume the sliced goals from the northstar handoff.
- For each goal: pick an engine, implement, peer-review, gate CI, decide merge.
- On merge, cascade-close the goal's issue with a triage status.
Prereq (fail-closed)
Autobahn assumes ai-catapult-init v3 and a valid northstar handoff are present;
it never bootstraps either. prereq-check.sh asserts the .ai/ structure exists
and a discoverable handoff (manifest optional_branches entry + handoff file) is
present, exiting non-zero with guidance otherwise. Do not proceed past a failed
prereq. See modules/prereq.md.
Orchestration (ultragoal, one PR per goal)
Delegate to ultragoal for durable, ledger-backed orchestration: consume the
sliced goals from the handoff and ship one PR per goal. ultragoal owns the
ledger and goal loop; autobahn only feeds it the sliced goals and reads back
status. See modules/orchestration.md.
Engine auto-pick + override
Per goal, pick a sub-engine deterministically from the goal record's shape
(precedence qa > parallel > persistence > default): ultraqa for QA-heavy goals,
ultrawork for parallelizable goals, ralph for persistence-needing goals,
team by default. A user --engine <name> override wins over auto-pick.
The override is the first interactive point. If no override is supplied, fall back
to the deterministic auto-pick below; to override, pass --engine <name> to
autobahn/engine-pick.sh (ultraqa|ultrawork|ralph|team).
See modules/engine-pick.md and
autobahn/engine-pick.sh.
Peer-review loop
Each goal's PR runs an architect + code-reviewer + executor loop: the
executor implements, architect and reviewer review, and the loop continues until
all comments are resolved. Authoring and review stay in separate lanes — never
self-approve. See modules/review-loop.md.
CI gate
A PR is mergeable only when remote host CI AND local CI are green and every
review comment is resolved (the feedback merge protocol). A red or pending CI run
holds the merge. See modules/review-loop.md.
Merge authority (configurable, fail-closed)
Merge authority is a thin adapter over the ai-catapult-init host-policy decision:
merge-authority.sh invokes host-policy, consumes its verdict + confirmation_token,
and wraps only the fail-closed exit-code contract. Admin-bypass merges only on a
host-policy-approved verdict with a valid token; otherwise stop at
ready-for-human; a valid token the policy still rejects fails closed. The
adapter re-encodes none of host-policy's token regex / admin rule / audit format.
Authorizing a merge is the second interactive point. To authorize, supply the
host-policy verdict + token to autobahn/merge-authority.sh; with no authorized
verdict the goal stops at ready-for-human. See
modules/merge-authority.md.
Cascade issue closure
On merge, delegate to the cascade engine to close the goal's issue idempotently
across repos and apply the canonical triage status. Closure is audited and
re-runnable without creating duplicates. See
modules/cascade-closure.md.
Command surface
autobahn registers as a first-class command in both harnesses under
.ai/commands/omx/ and .ai/commands/omc/ using the shared schema northstar
designed. See modules/command-surface.md.
Safety rules
- Fail closed: missing prereq, missing handoff, red CI, or unauthorized merge
stops with guidance — never silently merge or mutate.
- Compose, never reimplement: delegate every loop, merge policy, and cascade.
- Default merge authority is ready-for-human; admin-bypass only on an
explicit, host-policy-approved, valid-token verdict.
References
